Eid al-Fitr fete meager in camp

DOLO, Somalia (AP) — As she celebrated the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr today, Somali mother Quresho Mohmoud Dahir counted her blessings: all her children were alive. They had food. They were safe.

“We will eat very well today,” she said proudly, gesturing at the food rations she’d received that morning. Her 12-year-old daughter sat protectively atop the two sacks of corn and the beans her mother was going to prepare.

Dahir is one of hundreds of thousands of Somalis forced to flee their homes by war and famine. She and her six children, the youngest only 3 years old, walked 12 days to get to this United Nations-run camp on the Ethiopia-Somali border after her husband disappeared after fighting in their area.

Some days they were so hungry they ate leaves from trees. At night, she agonized over lighting a fire; it would protect her children from hyenas but might attract criminals or militiamen. Finally — sick, starving and exhausted — they stumbled into Dolo, a wind-swept outpost of brushwood buildings scattered among the twisted thorn trees and red sand.

Now the seven of them live in a ragged shelter made of plastic scraps and torn clothing stretched over branches. They depend on donors for everything from cooking pots to sleeping mats to food.

Dahir remembers past years when she used to mark Eid by slaughtering her own goats, having a feast for friends and family and giving charity to her poorer neighbors. But she said this year she will cook her donated rations gladly, and give thanks for the kindness of the people that let her family survive a famine that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives.

“Thank Allah that we were welcomed here and given food and we are safe,” she said, squatting in their makeshift shelter. “We are blessed. So many people helped us along the way.”

Many times, her children were so weak she had to leave the younger ones under trees and go begging, she said. There was never much to give — parts of the region they walked through are suffering from the worst drought in 60 years — but impoverished families they passed spared a bottle of milk or a handful of millet, she said. It kept them alive until they reached Dolo three months ago.

She counted the other small improvements since they had arrived. Locals donated two battered pots so she could cook, plus a single torn foam mattress and sleeping mat to share. The Italian government and the United Nations provided food, vaccinations and malaria medicine. A local charity set up a blackboard under a tree to serve as a school. Most of all, they were safe from the militias that destroyed her life more thoroughly than the drought.

“My husband disappeared during the fighting,” she said. “I don’t know where he is.”